This Bengaluru-based chef wants diners to move beyond safe options

Fashion’s been doing it for a while now, so it was time someone spoke about sustainability in food. The chef who is known for his jackfruit biryani as much as for his wit speaks to Vogue ahead of the launch of Toast & Tonic in Mumbai

On coining ‘integrity dining’
“Since there is no pre-deﬁned terminology for what Toast & Tonic stands for, I have coined my own—it’s called ‘integrity dining’. This means nothing is industrial or outsourced. We’ve gone down to ridiculous details—chefs mill their own ﬂour, make breads using culture and pick their seeds to press for oil.”

On bringing underdog ingredients to the fore
“I’ve already used jackfruit and millets on my menus, but there is an effort to introduce underdog meat cuts, specially due to our (Bengaluru’s Toast & Tonic) proximity to Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We have been using gizzards, bones and skin, but there is a small section of people who would like to experiment with it. Everyone wants a boneless piece of chicken.”

On what annoys him most about a diner
“I don’t really have an ideal diner. Sometimes I’m surprised by the openness of a 12-year-old who can have a phenomenal palate. Diners who don’t want to digress from their preconceived notions about how food should be are my less-than-ideal diners. An ideal diner comes with an open mind and, hopefully, is surprised by what is served—for better or for worse.”

On pushing the boundaries of food beyond restaurants
“I like to create awareness, not in a preachy-educational sort of way, but in an interesting way. Recently, at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2016 in Goa, we did food workshops on fermentation—from fermenting vegetables and cheeses to teas to create kombucha. I also did an immersive workshop with a theatre artist, where we recreated a restaurant set-up but instead of food, diners were treated to aromas.”

On the noise around the ‘farm-to-table’ movement
“In Mumbai there are so many restrictions in terms of real estate. What we are seeing right now are industrialised farms trying to reduce pesticides and produce speciﬁcally for restaurants. This only works to clean up the supply chain, but you can’t pull off half the things in Mumbai due to the lack of space. For example, my pastrami takes 27 days to make—you need lots of hanging space, a smoking area and so on. For Toast & Tonic, I’m going to centralise a lot of these processes. But the so-called ‘farm-to-table’ movement that we see here doesn’t feed the original Californian concept.”